


EMTKWUML IUMTQI PWUM AINM ABWX

by tillunwish



Category: Back to the Future (Movies), National Treasure (Movies)
Genre: Cryptography, Gen, Page 47, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8237602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillunwish/pseuds/tillunwish
Summary: “Clearly 1885-man was planning to make French toast. Nothing complex about that.”Riley, Ben, and Abigail decipher the contents of Page 47, which lead them to an old scientist with flyaway hair, his 19th century wife, and his teenage best friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



> Timeline-wise, this takes place post-Book of Secrets and post-BttF III. While I wish I’d been able to figure out all the minutiae of making the canons fit together neatly, I may have missed a few details. Regardless: I hope you enjoy this little fic.

Ben Gates called a meeting, to be held just before sunrise on a chilly February morning at the Tidal Basin.

He had a little leather book tucked under his arm.

Abigail stood at his side, teeth chattering, but still grilling him.

“Ben, if you’re going to wake me up at the crack of dawn and bring me here, you can at least tell me why,” Abigail snapped. “Where the hell is Riley? I suppose you already told him what’s going on.”

“He’s here,” Ben said neutrally.

They watched Riley park the Ferrari quite badly, and amble over to them, hunched. The wind blustered, unforgiving.

“I’m surprised you didn’t call in sick,” Abigail called to  him.

“Hey, I’d be on time if I didn’t have to decode every damn text from Mr. Cryptic,” Riley said.

“I’m not risking another cloned cell phone, remember?” Ben said absentmindedly, untucking his elbow to reveal the leather book. He opened it to a page in the middle, marked by gold ribbon.

“This is about page 47, isn’t it?”

Riley gave an outrageous sneeze, largely ignored by his companions. “What’s page 47?”

“No, it’s not.”

Abigail stared up at him, eyebrow raised, and stuck her neck out. “Then…?”

“What’s page 47.”

“Page 43. An incomplete documentation of anomalies throughout American history, and their locations.”

Abigail was unimpressed. “Okay, but that’s the entire book, Ben. What’s on this page that isn’t on the others?”

“The Book? Like, of Secrets? Would it kill you guys to keep me in the loop?”

“Now, see, page 43 is actually just a list of locations. Latitude and longitude coordinates, paired with library call numbers. The numbers pertain to volumes and volumes of texts that shouldn’t exist.”

“So the legendary Book of Secrets is just a travel guide to finding other Books in the wild?”

“And you’ve already tracked them all down, haven’t you.” Abigail’s voice was flat.

“No, the President told me about them,” Ben said, flipping a few more pages. “About letters that no longer exist, preserved through encryption.”

“So, they were destroyed. They were lost.”

“No. They ceased to exist. There’s a difference.”

“Wait.” Riley rubbed his eyes like he wished to disappear himself. “If these texts are in those volumes, how can they not exist.”

“Like I said, _anomalies_. Historical inconsistencies. Solid evidence, records of things that never happened.”

“Could it be a parallel universe?” said Riley, staring dead into space and shivering. “Ben, that’s just called history. Some people thought some stuff happened; other people thought different stuff happened.”

“ _Exactly,_ Riley!” Ben clapped him on the shoulder. Riley continued to stare. “Letters and documents that can only exist if they’re disguised as something else, transposed before they could disappear.

“This one.” Ben tapped his finger on a few lines of text. “A telegram, encrypted with a simple Caesar cipher, shift of 19. Only took me a few hours to figure  out.”

“Only.”

“What does it say?” Abigail leaned to peer at the text, folding her hair behind her ear.

 

‘EMTKWUML IUMTQI PWUM AINM ABWX’

 

Below it, in Ben’s awful chicken scratch:

 

‘WELCOMED AMELIA HOME SAFE STOP’

 

“Who’s Amelia?” Riley mused.

“Well, I have a guess,” said Ben, summoning his smuggest smirk.

“Oh, I get it. See, he’s had his fun and he just called us here to brag about it,” Abigail said, arms tightly curled.

“Yeah, is there a reason we had to meet you here at frostbite o’clock? I’d really prefer to keep my cojones.”

“No,” said Ben, his face now a poor mask of humility. “Cherry blossoms. They’re pretty. I wanted to beat the crowds.”

Sure enough, as they turned to look, the winter sun squinted through the wiry branches, the light revealing darker veins against the newly emerging pale pink petals. Beyond them, the Washington Monument stately rose.

“There are twenty-two different ciphers used in this volume alone, not including combination ciphers- or the other volumes. I need your help.”

 

\--

 

Ben, Abigail, and Riley worked on the ciphers tirelessly, using Ben and Abigail’s marble-floored foyer to lay out pages and pages of text. Riley was often found napping on a pile of crumpled scratch paper, blue and black and red ink smudges on his cheeks.

“Ben,” he said wearily after waking, “I just dreamed I was on a date with a lovely girl, and when I turned to kiss her, she transformed into the number eight. I blame you, Ben. I blame you entirely.”

Ben did not respond, but continued to scribble from his perch on the floor.

“Are we ever going to get to page 47?” Riley whined. “It’s gotta be way more interesting than all this other crap. This one took me four hours to figure out, and- look--” Riley pulled a matted sheet of paper out from his sad cot and brandished it. “Vigenère cipher, twenty lines long. ‘Eggs. Bread. Salt. Cotton. Circuits. Cream. Cinnamon.’ And on. It’s a _grocery list!_ From 1885!”

“Page 47 is the key,” Ben said, tilting his head to look at Riley over his reading glasses. With page 47, we understand everything. Abigail’s been working on it for days. It’s an incredibly delicate, complex artifact.”

“Clearly 1885-man was planning to make French toast. Nothing complex about that.”

“I’ve got it!” Abigail screamed from the height of the balcony, and raced down the stairs. “I have it! Page 47! It’s a letter! Look,” she whispered at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s like you said. It changes everything.”

“Read it,” Ben said. His eyes watered behind their lenses.

She read the letter. When she finished, they all stood, and thought for a good while.

“‘Do not attempt to come back here to get me,’” Ben said quietly, filling the foyer with a whole, hollow sound.

“Time travel,” Abigail breathed.

“Guys! Are you not- this is crazy! This is incredible! You know what this means--”

“It means the past was altered, because this letter no longer exists in its original iteration,” Ben said.

“It means they went back for him,” Abigail cut in.

“It means we need to find Marty,” Ben said, and turned on his heel.

 

\--

 

“Oookay, so, Marty McFly, in the year of our lord 2010, still has his name listed in the white pages,”  Riley said, scrolling idly. “Great! Now we know everything about him.”

Abigail leaned over to better see Riley’s laptop. “California?”

“California, baby.”

 

\--

 

“Please! We need a car! Some kind of vehicle, anything!”

Marty found it disconcerting to negotiate with himself, fully aware of how ornery he could be at times.

Before him stood a younger Marty, Doc, and Clara, fully outfitted in the garb of their native times.

“You know I can’t give you my car,” Marty hissed, twisting himself with alarming speed to see if anyone had overheard.

“Well, what about that one?” Clara pointed at Lorraine’s car, taking up temporary residence on the street in front of Marty’s.

“Noooo!” Marty whispered, thinking of the disastrous excuses he’d have to think of if his mother’s car was stolen by a younger version of himself, Doc, and a woman from the 19th century.

“Well, why not? Surely you don’t need two; your wife and children only take up three seats,” Clara puzzled.

“Just give us your lawn mower, anything!” Marty’s younger self pleaded.

“No, that’d never get up to 80 miles per hour,” Doc mused seriously, yet eyeing Marty’s closed garage door all the same.

“Why not? Emmett, you’re forgetting that rocket engines exist now!” Clara’s eyes glittered.

As she said this, a cherry red Ferrari pulled up behind Lorraine’s car, scraping its tires on the curb. A man hopped out of the passenger’s side and approached them, looking incredibly familiar as he did so; had that man been on TV?

“Are you Mr. McFly?” the man said, resting his sunglasses on the top of his head.  

“Are you that treasure hunter guy?” God, this was heavy.

“Yes sir,” said the man, Doc and Clara and Marty gaping openly at him. “And you must be Emmett L. Brown, correct? ‘Doc.’ I read your letter.”

“Hmm. I must not have written to you yet. Which year was it sent from?” Doc said, sizing up the treasure hunter guy, and then taking in the Ferrari, which gave a rather loud honk as the driver attempted to lock it. “Great Scott! Now that’s a time machine.”

“Mr. Brown,” said Ben, “I’d like to make you an offer.”

 

\--

 

The six had high-tailed it to the nearest In N’ Out, scooted three tables together, and began poring over the ciphers. Middle-aged Marty McFly, regretful but relieved, had stayed behind to entertain his parents. Riley ordered a cheeseburger animal style, and was banned from the table of precious documents; he stood ten feet away, munching incessantly.

“Incredible! This is the letter I wrote you in 1885,” Doc said, scooting his chair closer to Marty’s.

“But… I saw that letter disappear! It faded away,” said Marty, and Ben took this as his cue to launch into wild explanation.

“The kid and the old guy. Why are they friends?” Riley whispered to Abigail, who shushed him.

“This is the case with hundreds of documents, correspondences… pieces of history themselves rendered obsolete. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about how this could happen, do you?”

Doc coughed and glanced sideways at Clara. “Dealing with time travel is incredibly delicate! One small screw up could cause a future full of horror! Why, you could cause yourself to fade out of existence!”

Marty shuddered and examined his fingertips.

“We’re not interested in changing the past, or the future. Only in getting to the bottom of what really happened.”

“So… you can turn any vehicle into a time machine,” Abigail interjected.

“Oh, yes! As long as it can accelerate to 80 miles per hour. I once outfitted a locomotive steam engine with time circuits, flying circuits, and a flux capacitor! Beautiful.”

“What a good machine,” Clara said wistfully.

“What happened to it?” asked Ben.

“We don’t know!” Doc threw up his hands. “ Went back to the exact spot we left it, and poof! Gone! That’s why we’re stranded here, unless we can find a vehicle! Something, anything that moves!”

“Why don’t you just steal one?”

“ _Riley_!”

“What? It’s not like we have a great track record with that sort of thing.”

“Cars are different, they belong to regular people!”

“One could argue the Declaration belongs to all the regular American people,” Riley said cheekily. “Right, Ben?”

“I’d like to make a bargain with you,” said Ben. “We provide you with a vehicle. You turn it into a time machine. We watch, we document every step of the process. You return to your original time.”

“Hmm,” said Doc and Marty, and formed a huddle with Clara on their side of the table. After much gesticulating, the three turned, looking very serious.

“Okay. Yes. We agree to your terms.”

“But only if you tell us about this treasure-hunting business. And how you might potentially start one.”

“That wasn’t part of it, Clara.”

“Excellent. We have a deal.” Ben turned to Riley, looked at him with hooded eyes, and cracked a smile.

“Mr. Poole,” he said, “do I have your permission to, as they say, trick your ride?”

“Oh my god,” said Riley, leaping in the air like a giddy child.

 

\--

 

A few days later, the six of them stood in the Gates’ gated enclosure, admiring their handiwork. The only noticeable change to the Ferrari was a flux capacitor, mounted where the front license plate used to be. To Riley’s chagrin, this meant the Ferrari was no longer street legal, though he was somewhat appeased when he learned Doc could make it fly instead.

“Gentlemen, ladies…” Marty strutted in front of the Ferrari. “I give you, for all your time travel needs, the most technologically advanced model we’ve ever built, a DeLorean for the 21st century…”

Riley sidled up to Doc. “So, where to first? I was thinking Area 51, the moment of first contact. That’d be a crazy sight, wouldn’t it? Aliens?”

“I have a better idea,” said Abigail. She was standing with Clara to the side, a few scraps of paper in hand. One was the telegram Ben had shown them under the cherry blossoms. The other was new. “Let’s visit our friend Amelia.”

And Abigail revealed another telegram, transposed in fresher ink:

 

'HUJKHDYDW XECU YD JXHUU TQOI IJEF

MYIX Y SBT VBO VEHULUH IJEF

JXU UQHJX YI IE RUQKJYVKB IJEF

 

‘RETURNING HOME IN THREE DAYS STOP

WISH I CLD FLY FOREVER STOP

THE EARTH IS SO BEAUTIFUL STOP’

 

“I’ve been thinking about this all morning,” Abigail said slowly. “I think we’re supposed to go back in time and prevent her from getting home safely. That’s why the telegram sent by her mother disappeared. _We_ would be the reason she disappears.”

Riley gaped. “Are you suggesting we go back in time to _kill Amelia Earhart?_ What’s wrong with you? You’re all insane. The world isn’t ready for this level of power. Give me my flying car,” he said, swiping at the keys in Doc’s hand.

“Not kill her,” said Clara, from Abigail’s side. “Unstick her in time. So she can have unimaginable freedom. Travel the world, forever.”

“Sent just a few days before Mrs.  Earhart sent ‘WELCOMED AMELIA HOME,’ a few days after Amelia Earhart disappeared,” Ben mused. “It _would_ be nice to take a break from treasure hunting, getting caught in deadly traps…”

“No more deadly traps? Perfect. I’ll drive.” Riley held out his hand.

Doc moved instead to Marty, and dropped the keys into his palm.

“Seriously, Doc?! You mean it?”

“You’ve had plenty of experience.” Doc gave Marty a warm smile.

“Um, hello?” Riley threw his arms out to either side. Doc cast him a terrified look.

“The world is not ready for this level of power.”

 

\--

 

They roadtripped across the Pacific Ocean to meet Amelia halfway through her famed trek around the world. Once they’d crossed back over the continent and picked up mechanical doodads and supplies from Doc’s they headed out over the open ocean, at which point they all really began to hate each other. However, a quick (read: two week) stopover on the Hawaiian islands refreshed them for a long flying car ride crammed between five other grown adults.

The Ferrari arrived in Australia in the middle of the night. Doc twiddled the time dials to Ben and Abigail’s specs, and they hopped back to the year 1937, a few minutes before Amelia was scheduled to arrive in the same spot.

Surprisingly, nothing went horribly awry. More surprising, though, was that Amelia was early, and she was waiting for them.

“That’s a story for another time,” she said cryptically when asked, and the group exchanged looks of frustration. “Also, thought you might need these. They don’t make ‘em in the future anymore.”

She dumped a collection of odd bolts and screws into Doc’s palm.

Amelia was small in stature, quite sure of her steps, and had an adventurous spark in her eye only rivaled by Clara and Ben. She kept herself busy, asking questions about the modifications at every turn, and ignoring every one directed at her about her foreknowledge of their arrival.

“I had a premonition,” was all she would say.

Amelia’s plane didn’t take very long. At the finish, it looked exactly the same from the exterior besides a flux capacitor mounted beneath the propeller.

“I owe you everything,” Amelia said, kissed them all on the cheeks, and took off.

They each felt warm and confused for a bit, until Riley piped up, “Where to now, Doc?”

“Well,” said Abigail, “These three have to get home. And I believe we have thousands of historical time anomalies to decipher at home.” She grinned broadly. Riley gave the group at large a long-suffering look.

They deposited Marty in 1985 and again flew precariously over the States, as before dropping off Doc and Clara, Ben wanted to show them the cherry blossoms.

“Oh,” Doc said, interrupting Ben’s long-winded, comprehensive history lecture on diplomacy between the United States and Japan. “This would make a lovely picnic spot… if not for all the people everywhere.” Clara grasped his arm.

“I’m not sure I want to go back, just yet. Let’s stay here for a while? Learn all about the past and future of our country?”

And so they left Doc and Clara on a linen blanket in the spring of 1901, sharing a heap of warm scones and an assortment of delicious jams and jellies under the cherry blossoms.


End file.
